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February Activities 2013

Hello, and welcome to SPEW Buddies! If you've never participated in this before, SPEW buddies is an activity in which you are paired up with a fellow SPEWer. You both review each other and then participate in a character chat, an example of which can be found here. You can conduct these chats either by IM or by PM (total word count should be at least 500 words between all characters); the IM chats should be dialogue only and the PMs written like letters, as illustrated in the chats thread. Which you choose to do is up to you.

If you're interested, please sign up in this thread by no later than the end of the day (US Pacific Time, GST -8) on January 24th.

February Discussion and Feature: Reviewing Chaptered Stories

We've all done it: stayed up to ridiculous hours of the night, caught in the throes of a riveting chaptered fanfic, ensnared in its tractor beam of feels. Whether it be romance or suspense or angst, long stories have the unique ability to capture our attentions and emotions not unlike a great novel. This creates a quandary for some reviewers in that the story elicits many thoughts and opinions, yet how to express them seems to be difficult.

With that, we shall be exploring the depths of chaptered fanfic and how reviewing can present a unique challenge. Do we review the story as a whole or chapter by chapter, and how do we choose which to do when leaving a SPEW-quality review? Most of you by now have reviewed a chaptered fic for SPEW, and many of you have written stories of that ilk, so the amount of insight and discussion available should be stimulating.

I will leave you with a TQ or two to get started. As usual, please answer and ask one TQ for this activity to count towards your monthly requirements.

When leaving reviews for chaptered fics, do you prefer to leave reviews chapter by chapter or a longer, more summary review at the end of the story?

Does the presence of a larger quantity of information upon which to base a review help or hinder the process of reviewing?

This activity is due to be completed by the end of the day on February 15th.

When leaving reviews for chaptered fics, do you prefer to leave reviews chapter by chapter or a longer, more summary review at the end of the story?
I prefer to go for one big review at the final chapter. This means I can look at the overarching narrative, as any book reviewer would do. If I notice connections between previous chapters I might note them down as I'm reading so that I can bring them up in my review, and that helps me to give more detailed feedback. That said, if there's a particular chapter that I adored for whatever reason, I'll definitely do a separate review there so that I have time to really focus on it, rather than reduce it to a smaller mention in the final review. Despite this, I do really appreciate it when people review every chapter of my (admittedly few) chaptered fics. It proves to me that people have an invested interest in the characters, and encourages me to keep writing!

When leaving reviews for chaptered fics, do you prefer to leave reviews chapter by chapter or a longer, more summary review at the end of the story?

It depends on the number of reviews the story has already. If there are quite a few and there are a lot of chapters, I probably won't, but if there are a lot of chapters and nowhere near enough reviews, I'll probably leave some short, non-SPEWly reviews for most of them and then a long SPEW review at the end. However, if there are only two or three chapters, like in the case of Carole's Flonks, I'll likely just leave the one, regardless of the number of reviews, because it's easier to put in my thoughts in one long review. Any more than three chapters and I think that would be too much information to cram into one SPEW review.

Would you say you review chaptered fics or one-shots more? Why?

One-shots, definitely, because of the information problem. I honestly don't think I could do a chaptered fic justice with a SPEW review if it was 18 chapters long or something. Or else I would write a 3k monster of a review, haha, which I definitely don't think is a good idea. One-shots are a LOT easier to get my head around.

Soraya's TQ: Do the number of reviews versus the number of chapters affect if you will review/how many chapters you will review?

Definitely one shots, for they are much easier to review. Doing a SPEW review for each chapter would take a huge amount of time, but leaving a SPEW review at the end simply doesn't do justice, as Soraya said, because there's so much one can write about. One shots are much easier to review for, as they are short and contain a moderate amount of information for a SPEW length review.

Do the number of reviews versus the number of chapters affect if you will review/how many chapters you will review?

It does, as a matter of fact. Normally if there are many reviews per chapter I tend to just leave one review at the end of the story. However, if the story is really good (according to me) but there are few reviews per chapter, then I'll probably leave some short but helpful reviews for each chapter or every alternate chapter, because I think the writers deserve more reviews. If there are few reviews over chapter the writer may think that there's something wrong with their story, and often they tend not to update, which is a shame because the stories are often quite nice. I think there are two main reasons why I'd review a chaptered fic with les reviews per chapter: 1 would be to motivate the writer to continue with her story, and the other to actually help them with feedback.

TQ: While reading chaptered stories, do you check out reviews of future chapters to see where the story is heading?